Introduction

This is a post that is a repurposing of an old-school Mini-Review Round-Up post. As stated here I am essentially done with running multi-film review posts. Each film deserves its own review. Therefore I will repost, and at times add to, old reviews periodically. Enjoy!

The Innkeepers

The Innkeepers is Ti West’s sophomore effort, following on the heels of The House of the Devil and it tells the tale of a pair of hotel employees left to their own devices in a haunted, rundown hotel on its closing weekend. They do some further paranormal investigating and get far more than they gambled for. While I can categorically say I like this film more than I liked House of the Devil, especially upon second viewing, it still battles some of the same issues that film does. There are great performances by Sara Paxton, Pat Healy and Kelly McGillis which take this film up a notch above the prior by itself. As well as the film builds atmosphere and tension the incremental ratcheting up of incidents develops a bit too methodically to be as effectively as it should have. It has its occasional jolt but the ending leaves you wanting some. Leaving some details unexplained is fine but there’s a bit too much restraint throughout to have such a subtle payoff work ideally. Again I stress that I enjoyed the film West is clearly talented and I enjoy watching his films and seeing what he’s doing but at the moment his films play almost like the opening acts of Carpenter’s work. If he escalates and concludes a movie like Carpenter can he has classics waiting to happen in him. With that in mind I conclude by saying that I do anticipate highly seeing what he is capable of in a horror anthology where his running time is limited as V/H/S is one of the hot properties coming out of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

7/10